Laura

"My depression and anxiety goes back to the humility from my dad and being told at such a young age that I was an abomination. It was one of my strongest memories and I wanted the world to end."

Relationship with Dad
My dad’s a minister and he’s the most bigoted, homophobic person I have ever met. I remember, I was only 3 and half years old and my dad read me “The book of Leviticus” which has got quotes that state that if a man dresses as a woman, it’s an abomination of god. I felt like there was this horrible thing about me that I felt guilty about. I couldn’t talk to people about it and that basically that kept me in the closet until I was 30 yrs old. 

I have been caught cross dressing as a child and my dad used to humiliate me front of my family at night. I was about seven, the humiliation went on for about ten years until I left home. He would just say in front of the family about me wanting to be a woman, dressing up in women’s clothes, and making remarks every night at the dinner table.  As a child, your home should be a place of sanctuary. It should be a place where you’re safe. I remember I used to dread going home from school.

My depression and anxiety goes back to the humility from my dad and being told at such a young age that I was an abomination. It was one of my strongest memories and I wanted the world to end. I just wanted to die. Not telling anyone that I’m trans from 3 years to when I was 30 had led to awful lot of depression. I would say I was being self destructive, just not caring about the future. Didn’t care about my body, took a lot of alcohol and drugs. I didn’t want to be in reality because my reality was that bad. I just felt like my life was going in ever decreasing circles towards the end of my life and because I was so terrified of coming out to my parents, who had reacted to it in such a terrible way, I couldn’t face it at the time. I couldn’t tell my parents, I couldn’t come out, both I felt really guilty about. 

I’m 50 and I'm only feeling comfortable and happy now. I’m desperate to go on out and see the world, enjoy who I am. It takes awful long time when you’ve got those terrible messages beaten into you from when you were three to you’re eighteen. When you’re getting all these messages from your parents, and your mental health is poor, those are the things that will really get to you. 

Coming out
The only person I had come out to in my early 20s was my younger brother, and he got cancer and died 20 years ago. My younger brother was gay and he couldn’t come out to my parents either. So we had this bond. It was a really difficult loss for me. I realised at that point in my life that I needed to do something. I realised that your life can be snatched away from you. He was 28 when he died. So young. It made me realise that I need to transition and be myself, no matter what happened. So, I transitioned when I was 31, and that was 1999, and we weren’t as tolerant, open and accepting as we are now. 

Physical changes take longer in trans women than trans men. When I transitioned, there was no funding for surgery. There were absolutely no legal rights, whatsoever. In Edinburgh, they weren’t funding surgery. It wasn’t until 10 years ago, they started funding surgeries. That was really difficult. I think mental health has been much more of a challenge. Dealing with anxiety attacks, panic attacks, phobias, depression, that has been difficult. One of the best things about coming out is that it frees up all this space in your mind that was occupied with worrying, anxiety and self doubt. It just frees up your mind, its the most extraordinary thing. 

Discrimination
There was this one time I went in for a surgery. The first thing the nurse said was “So, I’m wondering if you should go in the men’s toilets or the women’s, the men’s recovery ward or women’s recovery ward.” She had no right to be poking about in my medical file. I didn’t want to have the surgery because I knew she would be looking after me but I did get it done and she said such horrible things afterwards. She said “You know you’re lucky I’m not prejudiced against you trans and gay people?”. You’re lying there after surgery, you’ve got loads of morphine in you, and this nurse keeps saying these horrible things and you’re trapped in the hospital. She said “Oh, I should know better. I had a transgender neighbour” and she used the word ‘It’ to describe her and I told her “You should say ‘Her’ if she’s a woman” The nurse said “No this was a freak. This was an IT!” I was just mortified. I couldn’t escape, it was kind of a nightmare.